Flying Colours

Chapter Sixteen

A midshipman came into the cabin as they ate breakfast.

“The fleet’s in sight from the masthead, sir,” he reported to Hardy.

“Very good.” As the midshipman went out again Hardy turned back to Hornblower. “I must report your arrival to His Lordship.”

“Is he still in command?” asked Hornblower, startled. It was a surprise to him that the government had left Admiral Lord Gambier in command of the Channel Fleet for three years, despite the disastrous waste of opportunity at the Basque Roads.

“He hauls down his flag next month,” said Hardy, gloomily. Most officers turned gloomy when discussing ‘Dismal Jimmy’. “They whitewashed him at the court martial, and had to leave him his full three years.”

A shade of embarrassment appeared in Hardy’s expression; he had let slip the mention of a court martial to a man who soon would endure the same ordeal.

“I suppose they had to,” said Hornblower, his train of thought following that of his fellow captain as he wondered if there would be any whitewash employed at his trial.

Hardy broke the embarrassed silence which followed.

“Would you care to come on deck with me?” he asked.

Over the horizon to leeward was appearing a long line of ships, closehauled. They were in rigid, regular line, and as Hornblower watched they went about in succession in perfect order, as if they were chained together. The Channel Fleet was at drill—eighteen years of drill at sea had given them their unquestioned superiority over any other fleet in the world.

“Victory’s in the van,” said Hardy, handing his glass to Hornblower. “Signal midshipman! I ‘Triumph to flag. Have on board—’.”

Hornblower looked through the glass while Hardy dictated his message. The three-decker with her admiral’s flag at the main was leading the long line of ships, the broad stripes on her side glistening in the sunlight. She had been Jervis’s flagship at St. Vincent, Hood’s in the Mediterranean, Nelson’s at Trafalgar. Now she was Dismal Jimmy’s—a tragedy if ever there was one. Signal-hoists were soaring up to her yard-arms; Hardy was busy dictating replies.

“The Admiral is signalling for you to go on board, sir,” he said at last, turning back to Hornblower. “I trust you will do me the honour of making use of my barge?”

The Triumph’s barge was painted primrose yellow picked out with black, and so were the oarblades; her crew wore primrose-coloured jumpers with black neckcloths. As Hornblower took his seat, his hand still tingling with Hardy’s handclasp, he reminded himself gloomily that he had never been able to afford to dress his barge’s crew in a fancy rig-out; he always felt sore on the point. Hardy must be a wealthy man with his Trafalgar prize money and his pension as Colonel of Marines. He contrasted their situations—Hardy, a baronet, moneyed, famous, and he himself poor, undistinguished, and awaiting trial.

They piped the side for him in the Victory, as Admiralty regulations laid down—the marine guard at the present, the side-boys in white gloves to hand him up, the pipes of the boatswain’s mates all a-twittering; and there was a captain on the quarterdeck ready to shake hands with him—odd, that was to Hornblower, seeing that soon he would be on trial for his life.

“I’m Calendar, Captain of the Fleet,” he said. “His Lordship is below, waiting for you.”

He led the way below, extraordinarily affable.

“I was first of the Amazon,” he volunteered, “when you were in Indefatigable. Do you remember me?”

“Yes,” said Hornblower. He had not risked a snub by saying so first.

“I remember you plainly,” said Calendar. “I remember hearing what Pellew had to say about you.”

Whatever Pellew said about him would be favourable—he had owed his promotion to Pellew’s enthusiastic recommendation—and it was pleasant of Calendar to remind him of it at this crisis of his career.

Lord Gambier’s cabin was not nearly as ornate as Captain Hardy’s had been—the most conspicuous item of furniture therein was the big brass-bound Bible lying on the table. Gambier himself, heavy-jowled, gloomy, was sitting by the stern window dictating to a clerk who withdrew on the arrival of the two captains.

“You can make your report verbally, sir, for the present,” said the Admiral.

Hornblower drew a deep breath and made the plunge. He sketched out the strategic situation at the moment when he took the Sutherland into action against the French squadron off Rosas. Only a sentence or two had to be devoted to the battle itself—these men had fought in battles themselves and could fill in the gaps. He described the whole crippled mass of ships drifting helpless up Rosas Bay to where the guns of the fortress awaited them, and the gunboats creeping out under oars.

“One hundred and seventeen killed,” said Hornblower. “One hundred and forty-five wounded, of whom forty-four died before I was removed from Rosas.”

“My God!” said Calendar. It was not the deaths in hospital which called forth the exclamation—that was a usual proportion—but the total casualty list. Far more than half the crew of the Sutherland had been put out of action before surrendering.

“Thompson in the Leander lost ninety-two out of three hundred, my lord,” he said. Thompson had surrendered the Leander to a French ship of the line off Crete after a defence which had excited the admiration of all England.

“I was aware of it,” answered Gambier. “Please go on, Captain.”

Hornblower told of how he witnessed the destruction of the French squadron, of how Caillard arrived to take him to Paris, of his escape, first from his escort and then from drowning. He made only a slight mention of Count de Graçay and of his voyage down the Loire—that was not an admiral’s business—but he descended to fuller details when he told of his recapture of the Witch of Endor. Details here were of importance, because in the course of the manifold activities of the British Navy it might easily happen that a knowledge of harbour arrangements at Nantes and of the navigational difficulties of the lower Loire might be useful.

“Good God Almighty, man,” said Calendar, “how can you be so cold-blooded about it? Weren’t you—”

“Captain Calendar,” interrupted Gambier, “I have requested you before not to allude to the Deity in that blasphemous fashion. Any repetition will incur my serious displeasure. Kindly continue, Captain Hornblower.”

There was only the brush with the boats from Noirmoutier to be described now. Hornblower continued, formally, but this time Gambier himself interrupted him.

“You say you opened fire with a six-pounder,” he said. “The prisoners were at the sweeps, and the ship had to be steered. Who laid the gun?”

“I did, my lord. The French pilot helped me.”

“M’m. And you frightened ‘em off?”

Hornblower confessed that he had succeeded in sinking two out of the three boats sent against him. Calendar whistled his surprise and admiration, but the hard lines in Gambier’s face only set harder still.

“Yes?” he said. “And then?”

“We went on under sweeps until midnight, my lord, and then we picked up a breeze. We sighted Triumph at dawn.”

There was silence in the cabin, only broken by the noises on deck, until Gambier stirred in his chair.

“I trust, Captain,” he said, “that you have given thanks to the Almighty for these miraculous preservations of yours. In all these adventures I can see the finger of God. I shall direct my chaplain at prayers this evening to make a special mention of your gratitude and thankfulness.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Now you will make your report in writing. You can have it ready by dinner time—I trust you will give me the pleasure of your company at dinner? I will then be able to enclose it in the packet I am about to despatch to Their Lordships.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Gambier was still thinking deeply.

“Witch of Endor can carry the despatches,” he said. Like every admiral the world over, his most irritating and continuous problem was how to collect and disseminate information without weakening his main body by detachments; it must have been an immense relief to him to have the cutter drop from the clouds as it were, to carry these despatches. He went on thinking.

“I will promote this lieutenant of yours, Bush, into her as Commander,” he announced.

Hornblower gave a little gasp. Promotion to Commander meant almost certain post rank within the year, and it was this power of promotion which constituted the most prized source of patronage an Admiral in command possessed. Bush deserved the step, but it was surprising that Gambier should give it to him—Admirals generally had some favourite lieutenant, or some nephew or some old friend’s son awaiting the first vacancy. Hornblower could imagine Bush’s delight at the news that he was at last on his way to becoming an admiral himself if he lived long enough.

But that was not all, by no means all. Promotion of a captain’s first lieutenant was a high compliment to the captain himself. It set the seal of official approval on the captain’s proceedings. This decision of Gambier’s was a public—not merely a private—announcement that Hornblower had acted correctly.

“Thank you, my lord, thank you,” said Hornblower.

“She is your prise, of course,” went on Gambier. “Government will have to buy her on her arrival.”

Hornblower had not thought of that. It meant at least a thousand pounds in his pocket.

“That coxswain of yours will be in clover,” chuckled Calendar. “He’ll take all the lower deck’s share.”

That was true, too. Brown would have a quarter of the value of the Witch of Endor for himself. He could buy a cottage or land and set up in business on his own account if he wished to.

“Witch of Endor will wait until your report is ready,” announced Gambier. “I will send my secretary in to you. Captain Calendar will provide you with a cabin and the necessities you lack. I hope you will continue to be my guest until I sail for Portsmouth next week. It would be best, I think.”

The last words were a delicate allusion to that aspect of the matter which had occupied most of Hornblower’s thoughts on his arrival, and which had not as yet been touched upon—the fact that he must undergo court martial for the loss of the Sutherland, and was of necessity under arrest until that time. By old established custom he must be under the supervision of an officer of equal rank while under arrest; there could be no question of sending him home in the Witch of Endor.

“Yes, my lord,” said Hornblower.

Despite all Gambier’s courtesy and indulgence towards him, despite Calendar’s open admiration, he still felt a constriction of the throat and a dryness of the mouth at the thought of that court martial; they were symptoms which persisted even when he tried to settle down and compose his report with the aid of the competent young clergyman who made his appearance in the cabin to which Calendar conducted him.

“Arma virumque cano,” quoted the Admiral’s secretary after the first halting sentences—Hornblower’s report naturally began with the battle of Rosas. “You begin in medias res, sir, as every good epic should.”

“This is an official report,” snapped Hornblower. “It continues the last report I made to Admiral Leighton.”

His tiny cabin only allowed him to walk three paces each way, and crouching nearly double at that—some unfortunate lieutenant had been turned out to make room for him. In a flagship, even in a big three-decker like the Victory, the demand for cabins always greatly exceeded the supply, what with the Admiral, and the Captain of the Fleet, and the flag lieutenant, and the secretary, and the chaplain, and the rest of the staff. He sat down on the breech of the twelve-pounder beside the cot.

“Continue, if you please,” he ordered. “’Having regard to these conditions, I therefore proceeded—’”

It was finished in the end—it was the third time that morning that Hornblower had recounted his adventures, and they had lost all their savour for him now. He was dreadfully tired—his head drooped forward at his breast as he squatted on the gun, and then he woke with a snort. He was actually falling asleep while he sat.

“You are tired, sir,” said the secretary.

“Yes.”

He forced himself to wake up again. The secretary was looking at him with eyes shining with admiration, positive hero-worship. It made him feel uncomfortable.

“If you will just sign this, sir, I will attend to the seal and the superscription.”

The secretary slipped out of the chair and Hornblower took the pen and dashed off his signature to the document on whose evidence he was soon to be tried for his life.

“Thank you, sir,” said the secretary, gathering the papers together.

Hornblower had no more attention to spare for him. He threw himself face downward on to the cot, careless of appearances. He went rushing giddily down a tremendous slope into blackness—he was snoring before the secretary had reached the door, and he never felt the touch of the blanket with which the secretary returned, five minutes later, tiptoeing up to the cot to spread it over him.